LITMIR.BIZ

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them by inciting the poor against the rich and promising them their property (422e6–423a5). This extremely dour account of international politics assumes that the only thing that matters for the city is its own self-defense, and the only thing that matters for factions in foreign cities is power and material gain. By adopting a policy of bribe, divide, and conquer, the city would not even offer its guardians much of an opportunity to display their vaunted courage and valor (cf. 422a8–c9 with 422e4–423b7).¹⁴ The new depiction of international politics, on the other hand, does not attempt to reduce them to money or power, but appeals to the broader and loftier sentiment of Greek kinship.¹⁵ Faced with the aggressive, anti-barbarian statements of Glaucon, which expose the dangerous side of this sentiment, Socrates takes care to endow the Greeks with unqualified goodness and gentleness (470e7, 471c1–2).¹⁶ He ceases to speak about the allegedly “hostile” barbarians, but encourages the city to put its energy into chastising errant and fractious Greeks (471a6–7). The formerly isolated, self-absorbed city has managed to appoint itself the arbiter of Greece.¹⁷ It might be worth asking whether the other Greeks would allow so peculiar a city, whose customs on matters as diverse as poetry and the role of women share so little in common with their own, to become the policeman of Greek unity. But what exactly do the Greeks share in common? Does Socrates present a satisfactory definition of Greek identity in the discussion?

      Alfarabi will begin his account of the Umma with a positive definition of it, but it is much harder to find such a definition in Plato. Socrates’s appeal to Greek identity in the Republic is deliberately vague, and unaccompanied by a satisfactory definition of it. Language is cited as a cause of the distinctiveness of the Greeks in the Menexenus (242a1–2), but not necessarily in the Republic.¹⁸ The same Socrates who told the Phoenician “noble lie” makes no attempt to argue for the common ancestry of the Greeks.¹⁹ The sharpest distinction made by Socrates between Greeks and barbarians concerns the sacred things, which the Greeks are supposed to share in common (470e10). But does the city of the Republic share in the Greek deities? Its most important god ranks as “the ancestral interpreter of such [sacred] things for all humankind” (427c2–4). Although this god is linked to the famous oracle of Apollo at Delphi (427b2–3), his broad audience does not suggest any particular interest in, or concern for, Greece. If the god were to enjoin the guardians to disregard Panhellenic sentiment and present captured Greek weapons as offerings at temples, they would be required to obey (469e7–470a3). Meanwhile, the Homeric description of the gods has been mostly rejected by the city (377d3 ff.). Although the poets and gods certainly help define Greek identity in the Republic, they do not seem to suit the city established in it. We shall soon see that the clearest definition of Greek identity in the Republic occurs only in Book X, after Socrates has ceased to talk of the city.

      Despite these difficulties, Socrates argues that by nature the Greeks are akin and friendly with one another, while the barbarians are foreign and hostile to Greeks (470c1–d1). The meaning of all these terms is somewhat vague, but Glaucon accepts them without asking for any clarification (470c4, 470d2): he seems deeply wedded to the notion of Greek unity and kinship without being able to articulate why. The significance of the words oikeios and allotrios²⁰ can be traced back to an earlier part of the dialogue, since they have already appeared in the description of the philosopher-dogs who were adduced as a model for the guardians. These marvelous creatures “define the oikeios by their acquaintance with it and the allotrios by their ignorance of it” (376b5–6): it follows that they are gentle toward the former and harsh toward the latter. Could these terms thus understood really apply to relations among Greeks? Spartan ways were often familiar to other Greeks only insofar as they were detested, while Cretans regarded even Homer as “foreign poetry” (see Laws 680c1–5). Massalia and Miletus were separated by hundreds of miles of ocean, and each might have had closer ties and familiarity with neighboring barbarian peoples than with one another. While Plato displays great awareness of such difficulties in the Laws, Socrates in the Republic does not even try to grapple with any intra-Hellenic distinctions. He barely touches upon the important division between Dorian and Ionian Greeks, and only in his discussion of musical modes (398e10–399a4).

      It would nevertheless be wrong to assume that Socrates is deluded by a romantic brand of Panhellenism that bears no relation to fact. His invocations of Greek unity represent a deliberate attempt to broaden Glaucon’s horizons. The notion that knowledge, philosophy, and sound political sense among humans can be equated with the instinctive awareness of dogs is, of course, a joke.²¹ Its naïveté is corrected to some extent by the appeal to Panhellenism, the effectiveness of which shows that humans in general, and Glaucon in particular, have attachments that extend beyond the crudely familiar. Socrates never even mentions Athens, which would have been truly oikeios to Glaucon. In this respect, the Panhellenic argument in the Republic differs dramatically from its counterpart in the Menexenus, which places Athens unabashedly at the head of Greece (Menexenus 245c6–d7). In the discussion of dogs, guardians, and philosophers, Socrates employs several different terms corresponding to different kinds of knowing, each broader and deeper than its predecessor. He begins with the word gnorimos, a basic term for “acquaintance,” but substitutes philomathos, or “love of learning,” and, finally, philosophos (375e3, 376b5–c2). In the final, “bold” statement, philosophers and lovers of learning are again said to be gentle toward those whom they know, but harshness toward strangers is omitted (376b11–c2). This same pattern is repeated in the discussion of Panhellenism leading up to the introduction of philosophy. Glaucon’s horizons are expanded by the successive introduction of three words, each connoting a wider attachment than its predecessor: philopolis, philellēn, and, finally, philosophos (470d7, 470e9, 473c11 ff.).²² Socrates manages to equate love of the city with love of civilized (hēmeros) Greece (470e7–9), before finally proceeding to philosophy, or love of all wisdom as such. This expansion of the sphere of Glaucon’s interest and the attempt to soften his martial inclinations open the way for the introduction of philosophy, whose love of knowledge of all things transcends, and ultimately breaks down, the distinction between familiar and unfamiliar (475c6–8).²³ If the people of the “place around us” who love learning can be identified with the philosophers (435e7; cf. 376b9–c2), they might not belong to any particular geographical community.

      Socrates’s creation of the smoke screen of the city’s Greek identity is admittedly risky and double-edged. He hopes that the city’s newfound sense of community with its immediate neighbors can be used to broaden Glaucon’s attachments and forestall disruptive wars without resorting to the cunning machinations required by his earlier discussion with Adeimantus. Yet Glaucon, not one to be satisfied by a city that eschews war (372b9 ff.), is inclined to view Greek unity as a pretext to initiate a still larger war against the barbarians. Socrates hopes that he can counteract this tendency by joining the city to a Greek nation deemed gentle rather than savage. But does Socrates ever fully purge Glaucon of his aggressive, Panhellenic longings? I do not think that the dialogue ever provides any conclusive proof. When Socrates announces that the rule of the philosophers is most likely to come into being “in some barbarian place, far outside our range of vision” (499c9–d1), it is Adeimantus who consents, but at least Glaucon does not interrupt.²⁴

      The Untraceable Origin of the City

      The introduction of the theme of Greek kinship serves several distinct purposes. It softens the attitudes of the city, reconciles its citizens to their fractious neighbors, and helps prepare Glaucon for the introduction of philosophy. Yet it does not succeed in integrating the city into any ethnic community, or in shedding light on its origins.

      Socrates’s attribution of the city to a remote barbarian place (499c9) dislocates the city from Greece, without locating it in Phoenicia, Egypt, Thrace, or any other known barbarian region. The basic problem inherent in the founding scene is never resolved: where is the city located, and who are its first inhabitants? To the best of my knowledge, there is but one passage in the Republic that gives an account of their origins. It is, of course, the notorious “noble lie” (414d ff., cf. 369c1–4, 470d8–9). This tale is literally no more true than it purports to be, but its shameless mendacity points to the heart of the problem: we know nothing whatsoever about the origins

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